When a brand-new, multi-channel experience delivers over one million orders and £27 million in revenue within 12 months of launch, you know you’ve done something right.
Leading hardware retailer, Toolstation, teamed up with our Intelligent Experience experts here at Kin + Carta to create a frictionless, data-driven, mobile-first solution that would facilitate its expansion across Europe. The result is market-leading in numerous regions and a key driver of Toolstation’s continued rapid growth.
Fuelling rapid business growth through an intelligent customer experience
Toolstation
At a glance
Speed to value
The mobile-first experience went from idea to Apple and Google app stores in 12 weeks.
Revenue generation
More than 1.1 million orders and £27 million in revenue processed in 12 months.
4.8-star ratings
High average ratings across both Play Store and App Store, with over 500,000 downloads and counting.
Widespread daily usage
The app boasts over 26,000 daily users on average.
Multi-language across markets
Simultaneously launched in other languages with functionality tailored to individual markets including Netherlands, Belgium and France.
Building a class-leading app with a frictionless experience
The eCommerce app we developed for and with Toolstation provides the most intelligent digital experience in the industry, giving consumers and trade customers the ability to go from search to purchase in only a few taps.
Our data-driven approach of using research and insights from key target audiences meant that we could build a frictionless experience that ultimately drives customer loyalty, advocacy and profitability.
The design and build were such that the new app can scale along with Toolstation while managing maintenance costs and reducing waste, all thanks to leveraging cross-platform technologies to power the proposition.
The benefits of our collaboration with Kin + Carta are plain to see in the performance of the app to date. It’s a product that people love to use, which is evident in the app store ratings, and it’s quite remarkable that it was all up and running in only 12 weeks. The team’s experience and expertise would be an asset to any business looking to build or rebuild an app.
John Danter Digital and IT Director, Toolstation
Accelerating speed-to-value with Flutter
A two-week discovery period set up a fast-paced delivery timeline of only 10 weeks for a product that is both polished and competitive in its many markets.
Leveraging the groundbreaking, cross-platform framework, Flutter, through our Google Cloud partnership, we worked with Toolstation to build natively, rapidly and efficiently, all from a single code base.
From low-fidelity wireframes to high-quality tech foundations, we addressed consumer and trade customer needs with a product guided by comprehensive user research and validation to complement our Intelligent Experience expertise. Our divide-and-conquer approach with strategically placed touchpoints between teams facilitated a frictionless workflow, so together we could deliver an experience that would resonate with customers and drive app-based revenue for Toolstation.
Creating intelligent experiences that scale with your business
With aligned ways of working and a combined focus on speed-to-value, our customer-obsessed teams delivered a robust experience that will scale with Toolstation as it goes from strength to strength.
In the UK, the app now accounts for 10% of Toolstation’s sales and it’s built to allow seamless international expansion beyond Netherlands, Belgium and France—the apps in those markets already take advantage of the single code base.
